Eco Tours (by boat)

Eco Tours (by boat)

Overview

Lets glide from the Sailfish Marina on our 49 passenger sightseeing boat and learn about all the beautiful islands in the Lake Worth lagoon. Sit back and feel the rays of sun across your face while listening to our staff bring you back in time on how the rich lived here in Palm Beach County. Learn about the struggles of the Singer family’s lives and how it all unfolded through the 1900’s.

Lake Worth Lagoon

In the mid-19th century the body of water the Lake Worth Lagoon was a fresh water lake. There were no rivers or streams flowing into the lake; all of the flow into the lake was by ground seepage from the Everglades to the west. Extreme high tides and waves, high lake water levels and storms occasionally caused the formation of temporary inlets that quickly closed up again.When there was no inlet available, the settlers in the area had to haul their boats over the barrier beaches to move them between the ocean and the lake.

In 1866 travelers reported that fresh water was pouring out of the lake into the ocean at a point about ten miles (16 km) south of the Jupiter Inlet.One report is that a settler named August Lang had dug the channel to open an inlet, and it was known as “Lang’s Inlet” for a while. This cut drained the lake down to sea level.The limited inflow of ocean water through the inlet and continued seepage of freshwater from the Everglades kept the lake from becoming more than mildly brackish.Lang’s Inlet was unstable and had to be dug out again every few months. Construction of a stable inlet at the “Black Rocks” one mile (1.6 km) north of Lang’s Inlet was finally achieved in 1877.The lake immediately began to change to a saltwater lagoon. The completion of a navigation canal from the north end of Lake Worth Lagoon to Jupiter Inlet in the 1880s resulted in increased freshwater discharges to the lagoon.